Always Keep You Safe
by Ashwee7
Summary: Post-Angel. This is basically what I want to happen in the last Maximum Ride novel. Comment and tell me what you think. FAX later on in the story.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

(Max)

_Midnight_

Never in my life have I felt so hollow. I'd barely eaten, drank, or slept for a whole week and nothing anyone would say could help. My body did everything mechanically, almost robotic. Not to sound dramatic but it felt like I had no soul; as if I felt nothing. I was sick and tired of being hurt and deserted and the only way to stop that from happening again was to detach myself from the world. I barely had enough will power to fly and even when I was in the air I didn't feel anything; only cold and empty. I didn't talk to anyone, but I still made sure to provide what was needed for the Flock no matter how much it killed me to stop grieving.

Paris had left me more damaged than ever before. I'd lost Angel, my baby, for good this time and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I offered to keep watch every night because I didn't want to sleep; sleep only brought me nightmares. The Flock and I were camped out in some forest in Germany that had huge shrubs and trees that concealed everything that was within it. As the rest of the Flock slept: I remained the only one awake, or so I thought.

"Max." Nudge whispered. I looked up from the make-shift campfire and peered over to the tree that the small twelve year-old was lying under. It was the first time anyone had tried to speak to me directly since we'd left Paris; since we'd left Angel. I looked around at the rest of the sleeping Flock.

"Yes?" I croaked. My voice was gravelly and rough from the underuse. Nudge grimaced at the sound of the word and stared at me with wide, brown eyes. I cleared my throat. "Yes?" I tried again. I didn't sound as bad as the first time, but I still sounded nowhere near like what I used to.

Nudge stood up and settled down next to me. She rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. "We need you back, Max." She looked up at me with a sad look no child should ever have on their face. "We've been looking for Ella, Jeb, and your mom for days but you haven't even told us where we're going. The Flock hasn't said anything because… well, because we don't want to bother you, but we need to know what's going on inside your head." Nudges' voice became weaker and weaker as she spoke. "You can't shut us out forever; we need you. I'm scared without you."

I bit down on my tongue. I know that I had been emotionally moving further and further away from the Flock, but I hoped that they knew I would always be there for them. "You shouldn't be scared, Nudge. I'm here." I kissed the top of her head. But she should be scared; I had no plan. I didn't even know where we were supposed to be going.

"But you're not here, Max. You may be physically with us, but I haven't seen _you _until now." I could tell that she was on the verge of tears so I wrapped my arms around her as she continued to speak. "I know that – that losing her was hard on you, but we lost her, too."

I listened to the fire crackle and took a deep breath, trying to keep from breaking down. "I'm back Nudge, okay? I will never leave you. I'm so sorry I've been so distant." I gazed at my sleeping Flock; Gazzy and Iggy next to each other beside a giant bush that concealed most of them, and a a sleeping Dylan, who had been nothing but helpful to me since we left Paris. "I'm here." I whispered more to myself than to Nudge.

Nudge nodded and lay down beside me. She grabbed my hand and didn't even let go when she fell asleep.

"Get yourself together, Max." I told myself. "Find mom and Ella. Then you'll find out what to do."

I pulled my knees to my chest and focused on my surroundings again, making sure that my Flock would stay safe.

I will always keep my Flock safe.

_The Next Morning_

As the Flock began to awake at dawn they all looked at me wearily. They didn't try to talk to me as they stood up and started making a new fire. I rubbed my eyes and stood up, looking at every single one of the Flock members. Iggy with his pale – well, everything; Dylan with his handsome facial features; Nudge with her mocha skin and curly hair; and Gazzy who looked painfully like Angel.

The normal exuberance that the Flock had was completely wiped out. Losing Angel had taken a huge toll on them and my spiritual absence didn't help one bit.

Iggy began making breakfast out of canned fruits that he managed to steal from a supermarket. Everyone was hungry and even though the processed fruit wasn't much, it still looked like a feast to us. Nudge kept sending me nervous glances almost as if she was trying to decide that our conversation last night was a dream or not. Everyone took a small helping of the fruit in a cup and Dylan placed one in front of me without making eye contact. As everyone began digging in to their tiny breakfast I cleared my throat.

"I'm sorry, guys."

Every single person's head snapped up, completely ignoring their food. And for the Flock to ignore food was huge.

"Max?" Gazzy asked. "Was that you?"

I nodded, "I've been a pretty horrible Flock leader this past week, I know. And I'm sorry. I'm going to get back on track." I peered around at everyone who still seemed to be absorbing the fact that I was no longer in a catatonic silence. "We'll find as much information on the One Light as we can. My mom and Ella are probably where the One Light's headquarters is. We'll rescue them and hopefully stop the One Light in the process. I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick of losing people. I will stick with this Flock until the end. The second we get back my mom and Ella we can go wherever we want. We can all visit the places we've wanted to go . . ." I smiled a little, "Or we can run off to some deserted island and forget all of this ever happened."

I looked down at my dirt caked hands and then back up at my wide-eyed flock. "Sound like a plan?" Seeing as that huge speech was the first thing I had said to them all week, I wasn't expecting anything less than a stunned silence once I was finished. But, yet again, Nudge has never been a silent one.

Immediately, Nudge dropped her food and tackled me into a huge hug. Gazzy smiled a weak smile, but considering that he had just lost his sister it was a big deal. Iggy put his arm around Gazzy's shoulder and nodded at me. Dylan pried Nudge off of me with a grin and handed her the laptop.

"You, my dear, have a lot of research to do." Dylan smiled at Nudge who opened the computer and began searching everything under the sun about the One Light.

"Thanks for sticking with me, Dylan." I said.

He sat down next to me. "No problem, Max." The Flock was doing more than they had all week; Gazzy and Iggy continued to eat their food and talk about where they wanted to go and Nudge typed rapidly on the laptop. No one was paying attention to Dylan and me.

Dylan grabbed my hand in his and my whole body clenched. I was so conflicted on whether or not to pull my hand away or not, but the look on my face must have given him all of the information he needed. He let go of my hand. "I'm sorry."

I just nodded and took a deep breath. I couldn't focus on Dylan or – or … _him _right now; I had to worry about finding my mom and Ella and the safety of the Flock, because that was all that mattered.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

(Max)

_A day later_

I stared at the laptop screen in disbelief. Nearly an hour ago Nudge had found information on the One Light that no one could understand. We knew that it was classified information and not just junk because the file was blocked by five different passwords and took Nudge almost a day's worth of hacking to get through.

"There's barely any words; only symbols." Nudge said, her brow furrowed. "It must be written in some code. There has to be a cheat sheet somewhere, but it'll probably take me a while… I don't even know how to type these symbols into the computer!"

I ran my fingers through my hair. "Well it's a start. Just keep trying to read it, maybe something will jump out at you."

We were still in the same woods that we were in the day before and barely anything had been found. When Nudge first found the file she was excited just because she got through the system, but we had looked at the screen to a sorry sight. Only the first sentence of the file was readable, _Our Lord, Our Light, Our Savior. _The rest of the screen was filled with odd text and really just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

For an hour everyone took turns looking at the text, well, everyone except for Iggy, who I could tell was getting more and more bored by the second. After Nudge had another thirty minutes of research she slammed the laptop shut and groaned.

"It died." Nudge stood up and looked straight at me with an annoyed look. "Max, I'm hungry, tired, and we need to charge the laptop. We need to find a new place to stay tonight; I'm sick of staying here." Almost immediately her eyes widened and she shut her mouth as result the look on my face. It took me a second to realize that it was _Nudge _that just tried to order me around. I needed to be smart with this.

"Erm…uh."

I'm the next Einstein.

I regained my composure. "Okay, but we have to get money first."

Everyone smiled at me and was packing their things in a flash. Everything was being shoved into our backpacks and wings were being shaken out in of our backs. I unfolded my wings and closed my eyes in pleasure. It felt like a nice good stretch after not moving for weeks.

"Uhm, Max? How are we going to get the money?" Iggy asked, thowing his iPod into the front pocket of his backpack.

"We pick out the biggest jerk we see in a crowd." Dylan said with a shrug.

At first I wanted to shoot Dylan's idea of stealing money down, but I truly had no idea how we'd get money. There was really no way for us to earn money, and it wasn't really the first time we'd be stealing money. I could only agree with Dylan.

"Another question I'm just going to put out there; what country are we in?" Gazzy asked.

That one had both me and Dylan stumped. When we left Paris, I really had no destination in mind; my only goal was to get as far away from that disaster as possible. "We'll find out when we reach civilization, I guess." I replied.

"Are you guys ready?" I asked with a tiny smile on my face. It's almost been three days since we've all flown.

"Yes!" Everyone shouted in unison.

I laughed and took a running start. I felt my wings spread out of instinct and enjoyed as every little feather moved with the wind. My legs moved faster and faster and then suddenly my feet didn't even touch the ground. I soared up past the trees and breathed in the cold air. I looked back and watched as my flock followed in a tight V formation behind me. I spread my arms out and smiled. It felt so good to fly again. The air rejuvenated me; the wind peeling off layers of depression that had been forming for days.

I looked beyond the vast forest before me and saw a giant green, white, and red flag blowing in the wind. "What countries' flag is that?" I asked Dylan.

Dylan focused his eyes on the flag, "I think its Italy's."

"Out of all of your amazing talents, is speaking Italian one of them?" Iggy joked to Dylan.

"Yeah, right." Nudge giggled.

Dylan smiled and began speaking fluently in some foreign language. As much as I failed to keep the surprise off of my face, my voice was surprisingly nonchalant. "That'll come in use."

_Three hours later_

"She looks like a bi—"

"DYLAN." I cut him off, looking at Nudge and Gazzy.

"Sorry," He said, his face growing red. "But I wouldn't mind taking her money. She's been making very rude comments about Gazzy's scent."

Iggy snorted, "I don't blame her."

"And she said that your eyes were creeping her out, Iggy." Dylan replied.

"How rude!"

Gazzy laughed, "I don't blame her." He said in a mocking tone.

Iggy and Gazzy began bickering like an old married couple while Nudge giggled in the background. "Guys, shut up and take it out on the lady." I rolled my eyes and watched as the snobby fat woman ate some creamy pastries across us in the café we were sitting in.

"Okay, her purse is hanging off the back of her chair. Iggy you have steady hands, you'll sneak up behind her and grab the bag. Dylan, seeing as you're the only one who can distract the woman, go up and talk to her."

Dylan stood up with a huge smile on his face and walked over to the woman. She looked up with a scowl on her face at first, ready to yell at whoever dared interrupt her, but when she saw Dylan she looked like she'd won a year's worth of free pastries. They both spoke fluently to each other for quite some time. Dylan seemed to be saying that the woman reminded him of a beloved relative, but I couldn't understand anything else.

The woman was so entranced with looking at Dylan and just hearing his voice that she didn't even notice tall Iggy walk up behind her and simply grab the bag off of her chair. He walked back over to us and dumped out the bags contents onto the table. I grabbed the wallet and all of the change that we could see on the table. We shoved everything else back into the bag. Nudge giggled when she saw a zip-lock bag of even more cream-filled snacks in the purse's contents. Gazzy snatched the zip-lock bag before Nudge put it back in the purse.

Iggy took the purse back and set it on the ground behind the woman, who was still completely oblivious to the teens stealing all of her money.

"Let's go." I said. Everyone slipped out of the café and we stared at Dylan from outside the huge window. Dylan acted as if he was missing some important meeting and ran out of the café, where the fat woman was sitting utterly confused.

"Do you know how to count Italian money, too?" I asked Dylan.

He shook his head, "I'm not that awesome."

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't hide the smile from breaking out across my face.

"Okay, let's go find a hotel. It looks like we have enough money to feed a hundred bird kids." We all turned the corner and followed Dylan as he tried to find the nearest hotel and restaurant.

(Fang)

"What's up, Tall-Dark-and-Intimidating?" Maya asked with a smirk as she walked into the motel room. She took a bite out of the sandwich she was holding and sat down on the couch across from me. "Why didn't you go out to eat with everyone else? Don't bird kids need a mass amount of food or something?" She shook her magenta streaked hair out of her face and tossed a half of her sandwich over to me.

I looked up at her and shook my head, "I'm trying to find out about the One Light. Hacking into systems is really hard without Nudge." I tossed my laptop aside and leaned back against the wall. "Is everyone else still eating?"

"Yeah; Ratchet got into a fight with the waiter saying that the prices were a rip-off. The four of them aren't going to be back for a while." Maya took another bite of her sandwich. "Eat up; I can practically see your ribs. You look like a mistreated dog."

I rolled my eyes and took a bite of the sandwich. "Happy?" I hadn't had much time to do anything but search for the One Light, which had basically been a dead end.

Maya lay down on the couch and turned on the old TV. She flicked around the channels for a little bit before stopping at the English dubbed news.

A French reporter spoke into the camera with a thick accent. _"France officials are still in recon to try to fix the Paris terrorist disaster that happened last week. So far thirty-seven people have been declared dead and seventeen people are still missing. Almost half of the wreckage has been searched through, but the other half has still been untouched. The chanced of finding the missing people seems very grim."_

I looked over to Maya who sat up and began listening intently to the TV. Did they find Angel yet?

"Turn it off, Maya." I said.

She shook her head. "No, I want to know what's going on."

I groaned, but didn't fight the case because it wasn't worth it. Maya continued to watch the news as I just sat on the ground and stared into space. Ratchet, Star, Kate, and Holden walked into the room talking about their lunch.

"I told that guy not to mess with me. I knew we were getting ripped off." Ratchet said as he tossed his wallet down onto one of the two beds. Star and Kate rolled their eyes and sat down next to Maya on the couch. Holden sat down in the corner away from everyone and cracked open a small book. Maya ignored everyone and continued to watch the news.

Minutes passed and the room became louder and louder as Ratchet, Star, and Kate talked about pointless stuff. I could tell Maya was getting more and more annoyed by the noise.

"Guys, shut up." She said.

The volume in the room stayed the same.

"Yo, shut up." She said again, glaring at them. Star raised her eyebrow at Maya and continued talking.

"Shut up!" Maya yelled. Everyone instantly went silent and stared at Maya. She turned the volume on the TV up.

"_The Doomsday Group's leader, who calls himself the One Light has made a public announcement today." _The French reporter said. _"He has stated that what his supporters had done in Paris was a freak accident."_

The TV switched to a clip of a small man speaking at the top of the podium. He was short, fat, and had a huge white mustache. He was nothing at all what I expected the One Light to look like.

"_Hello, hello. I am George Lockmason. I do not even dare to call myself the One Light, I am only his assistant. The accident that occurred in Paris a week ago was not at all instructed to happen by the One Light. The Doomsday Group does not know what went wrong with Mark. We think he had physiological issued that had been unforeseen by the people doing our company issued physicals. We apologize for everything that has been damaged and the Doomsday Group will compensate for all of the damages." _

Everyone stared at the TV in disbelief. The room was silent, waiting on every single word this Lockmason man said.

"_The One Light hopes to make it up to you though! We will be having a new rally _– _heavily guarded of course. At this rally we will introduce our latest experiment that will help our planet's future! Information on the rally will be released as time goes on! Support the One Light, the person who truly knows what's best for our world! Only one clue will be released now about the upcoming rally: G. 77. The Doomsday Group hopes to see you!"_

The TV screen changed back into the French reporter who was debating with another reporter about what the possible outcome of the rally.

Everyone in the room stared at each other. "G. 77?" Star asked.

"I don't have a clue." Said Holden, who had moved over to the group to watch the TV.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. "I think I have an idea."

"Well, go on." Maya said.

"They're going to introduce Generation 77 mutants to the public. And I bet my wings it's not going to be pretty."


End file.
